


Measuring A Dream (MAD)

by DragonaireAbsolvare



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Perception, Time - Freeform, dream - Freeform, dream within a dream, dreamscape, it gets so weird, philosophical, psychologic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:42:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25958479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonaireAbsolvare/pseuds/DragonaireAbsolvare
Summary: Hands down, this is the weirdest dream I have ever had, and I have even dreamt of Heaven under the Sea and God being a sea-creature. I have dreamed of a flying baseball bat with the wings and abilities of a bat (animal), and I have dreamt of giant hands holding up the sea in which the keys to the universe are suspended. I have dreamt of imagination personified and also of a dog running after a runaway runny nose. I have dreamt of Pluto (the planet) being pulled into a tornado of bottled coke. I have seen shit and this tops everything I have ever seen before:A dream within a dream, observations of the simultaneous flow of time in three different dreamscapes, and a bizarre story with a mysterious philosophical author.
Kudos: 1





	Measuring A Dream (MAD)

_To my dearest Kitty- No thanks can be enough for giving me one of the greatest insights of my life. Here’s to hoping that they can now clear your world- cheers, JIM CAVANAUGH_

***

  


I was asleep, and my parents had gone out for work.

The clock showed 11: 50 am.

My mother called for me, but I was half-asleep and didn’t want to get up. I peered a half-lidded eye towards the clock and continued to dream.

My mother was recently transferred to the administrative section of our dictator government. There was an upheaval at the government, and those who supported the coup were punished harshly. In accordance with that logic, those who supported the dictatorial government were rewarded- without their permission.

These ‘rewards’ weren’t always beneficial. For example, my mother, who desired to keep working in the labour-intensive midland section, called the Forge, was transferred to a highly coveted position in the highland Administrative Section, as the department head. It was a headache, to deal with petty, selfish bureaucrats and politicians, and the self-important bourgeoisie.

The Forges were the part of the country that dealt with extraction and refining of resources, whether it be agriculture or industry. The lowlands had the Mechanics Section, where the refined resources would be put together and shipped to different parts of the country. These two were the blue-collar sections, while the Administrative section up North dealt with the politics, governance and military matters. To get a position in the administrative departments was considered the greatest honour, but for people like my mother and father, who preferred to work in the peace and quiet, honest working atmosphere of the mid and lowlands, it was more of a punishment.

And so, today, my mother was having her co-workers over for lunch. They would come at one in the afternoon, and we were all running around, arranging the house to be fit to welcome guests. I was sleeping, and my mother told me to make my bed.

I grunted and began to smoothen out the sheets and fluff the pillows up, when I glanced at the clock. It was twelve noon, and the doorbell rang. The guests were early for some reason- they wanted the lunch done with as soon as possible.

I put all my dolls under the bed covers and climbed on it to sleep again. There were sounds coming from the dining room nearby. When it quieted down, I gazed at the clock- it was five minutes past twelve, and the dining room was back on the ground floor, where it was supposed to be in the first place. There was no lunch meeting- it was all in my head, a dream.

I fell back to sleep, and the voices continued discussing the involvement of the Public Health office in the poor-quality products coming out of the Mechanics section. There was a high pitched female voice and a raspy male voice alongside my mother’s.

They droned on and on, and it was unbearable. I kept slipping in and out of dreams- I dreamt that there was a park outside our apartment home. When I blinked blearily and squinted at the clock, it was 12: 14 pm. There still were voices in the dining room beside my bedroom, and I sighed. I had thought time would go faster, that it was almost half-past twelve. I woke up from that dream, and the real dining room was silent. The real clock also was at quarter past twelve.

I slipped back into the dream within a dream, waking up at irregular intervals, watching the clock tick every excruciatingly long second, still hearing the droning of conversation in the dining room. I remembered my mother telling me how she could not stand the female guest- she was one of the many at Administration section who loved to coast along pushing around paper work from office to office and indulging in petty gossip. She was also a loudmouth with a high, false laugh that got on the nerves of anyone who heard it. The male guest was quieter, but he was extremely corrupt. If you wanted to get his sign on any application or file, you would have to pay him an immodest sum.

They were the only two guests for the day and I found myself slipping into another dream.

I was sleeping in the dream within a dream too.

I woke up to find one of my mother’s guests standing at the bedroom door. The time on the clock was still 12: 14 pm, and the guests are still eating in the dining room. It was strange- I would have expected time to progress faster, a quarter to one, possibly. I suddenly slipped out of the dream and glanced at the clock- the real one in the real world- it was 12:20. It wasn’t yet time for lunch and I was far too lazy to get up anyway, so I slept some more.

I was back in the dream, and I’m sure I’m dreaming in it again- because there shouldn’t be a third guest for lunch. There still were two guests in the dining room, so who was this stranger at my bedroom door?

I cried out aloud, startled, and my mother rushed in. She saw the guest and introduced him as Tuthtut. It was a strange name, and I walked to my mother, flexing my tongue around the strange consonants. I knew for a fact that my mother didn’t have a colleague named Tuthtut, but she apparently knew him well, for they shook hands and Tuthtut handed her a parcel.

“It’s from Mr Cavanaugh.” He said.

My mother got excited as she ripped through the cover; and it was a book. She flipped through the first few pages, and then handed me the book, leaving to escort the strange guest to the door.

It was obviously a new book, I realised, as I flipped through the covers. I knew the author, Hussain. I had read his previous work, The Line of Endless Trees. My mother once told me that Hussain was a pseudonym that he chose- to publish his books as the citizen of a different country, lest the controversies in it be traced back to him. Our dictatorship was not a forgiving one- the man behind the name would surely be executed.

He had sent my mother a signed copy of Endless Trees; it talks about the monotony of workers in our government’s labour-intensive sectors. The Forge, to be precise. He had once gone there and lived amongst the workers as material for the book.

I glanced at the clock- it’s 12:30 pm.

Slipping out of the dream, I blinked at the clock, exhaustion aching my bones- the real clock shows 12: 20 pm. My dream flew much faster than the real world- although the work lunch in the dream dining was so very boring. I thought I would sleep some more- because I have to wake up at 12:30 for my real lunch (by myself).

The dream picked off where I left it. There was the lunch party in the next room, and I’m still sleeping on the bed. I slipped into dreams again, and there was Hussain’s new book in my hands.

The title read, The Unbalancing Act.

There were notes and pictures clipped onto the first and last few pages- a middle-aged man with a brown Rottweiler, the park in the Forge’s airstrip that I’ve never been to, but I had seen pictures of in my mother’s old album, and the actual interior of the forges.

The pictures seemed to be taken with a professional camera- such was the quality. The fires in the underground ironworking plant seemed to pop out of the picture and consume me in their glowing heat, and I could feel the damp, earthy smell of the dewy ferns, and rain-saturated runway in the airstrip picture.

There was a line in the dedications page: _To my dearest Kitty_

And under it was a small yellow sticky note, written in an untidy hand, and signed in capitals- _No thanks can be enough for giving me one of greatest insights of my life. Here’s to hoping that they can now clear your world- cheers, JIM CAVANAUGH_

And suddenly, I was drifting out of my body, recollecting the story that my mother once told me. Back when my mother was still the superintendent of the Forge, long before the coup, she had gone to inspect the Underground Ironworking plant in Delta Island. The island was a good distance into the sea, and could only be approached by seaplanes- the waters were shallow, with jagged rocks that could wreck a boat.

She returned from the inspection to realise the flight back had been cancelled due to cyclonic alerts along the coast. At the airstrip, she met Cavanaugh, who also had his flight cancelled. While waiting, he spoke about his book and asked mother all sorts of questions, about her life as a senior superintendent.

While the Endless Trees was inspired from the life of being a nameless, faceless worker among the thousands that toiled their life away in the Underground Ironworks plant, the Unbalancing Act was inspired by my mother, who came from a humble background and rose steadily in ranks to become one of the highest officials of the Dictatorship. It spoke about how life in a high office was a performance act, preparing for an audience.

I woke up and look at the dream clock- it was still 12:30 pm, although it felt so much longer. It felt like I had slept till one in the afternoon. And then I slipped outside my dream to glance at the real clock- it showed 12:29 pm. But I was far too exhausted to get up- knowing that there was only one more minute that I could sleep before I had to get up for lunch.

I dropped back into my dream state, and heard a loud siren. I jumped out of the bed and peered through the window to glimpse a van rushing out of our apartment gates. Outside the bedroom, my mother had just returned from escorting the guests out.

The clock in the dream seemed to be stuck at half past twelve. My mother told me to get dressed, that we would have to go out for a walk. It made me rather confused, but there was a sense of urgency in her words that I hurried about, packing important things into a valise. It was instinct, although if someone were to ask me where that instinct came from, I would not be able to answer.

As I packed, my brain shifted in a daze to the conversation I had dreamed up- of Cavanaugh and my mother- Cavanaugh pulled spools of thread out of his pockets and reeled them in his fingers, listening to my mother’s life as an administrator. When she finished, he peered at the thread rolls, and huffed. He then slid a needle through their centres, stringing them together and dangling them in front of their eyes.

Cavanaugh seemed to be right-handed. The reels spun in the right direction are smooth and even, and the reels spun in the other are slightly wonky. It’s uneven and criss-crossed.

For a brief moment, I slipped out of the dream and gazed at the clock (12:30, both the dream and the real one) and was back in the dream within the dream before I knew it. The trance felt like it had gone on for much longer- the clock should have been at twelve minutes past one. Perhaps it has run out of battery.

This incident also repeated in The Unbalancing Act. In the book, Hussain tried to point it out to his readers.

_‘Preparing for an audience is like rolling spools of thread in the hands. There are two directions one can roll- let’s call one the roul and the other, spook. Life is like driving a needle through these rolls of thread, through alternating rolls of roul and spook, until you pull through at the other end. The spook is a state of balance. It comprises of clean, unbending lines, and looks organised and represents the orderly running of life. The roul, on the other hand, represents unbalanced mess, like the chaos in life, the things that make us vulnerable._

_The key to rising lies in laying bare a little of the roul alongside the cold order of the spook. The spook showcases your efficiency and impresses the audience. The roul holds you to the ground, lets them know that you’re human too, so that they may not think you can singlehandedly manage everything. It makes them empathise, and makes your work easier._

_That is the Unbalancing Act.’_

I broke out of the trance, glancing at the clock (it seemed to be permanently stuck to 12:30 pm) and tugged my valise out into the dining room. My mother was waiting- my father had already left, I could see his silhouette walking ahead, out of the window. My mother opened the door and beckoned me to follow.

There, again, the fine line between dream and trance faded, and I realised we were walking through the woody park. I had only walked for a while when it struck me that I had forgotten to feed the cat and lock the house.

“Be quick!” My mother said, as I tossed my valise at her and ran back to the house. God, it felt like such a long time ago that I had been sleeping peacefully with my dolls. When I reached the house, the door wasn’t locked, and I headed to the cabinet to get out some cat-food.

I fed the cat- it must have been half an hour since I first left the house, but the clock had not moved a second. I walked out of the window, and entered the park, and that should have been the first indication that I’m in another dream-state. My room was on one of the upper floors of the apartment. There was absolutely no way in hell that I could just slide one of the windows and walk out into the woods.

That was where the dream bizarrely ended, me walking into the park through a line of endless trees.

I woke up, and the clock showed 12:35 pm. It was time for lunch.

***

  


FINAL INTERPRETATION:

Dreaming happens in inverse time: if it is something interesting, time flows slowly in reality, until it absolutely stops, and when dreaming about a terrible bore, time in the real world flows faster as opposed to our conscious world, where one perceives time flying past when doing interesting things, and moments dragging on when we are bored.

The _perception_ of time in the dream world is in the direction of the _real flow_ of time in the tangible world- but the _visible clock_ in the dream works in the direction of flow opposite to perception.

  


BOOKS: (If any of these are real, please contact me. I’d like to read them)

The Line of Endless Trees- Hussain  
The Unbalancing Act- Hussain

**Author's Note:**

> The events of my dream have been recorded in the most honest and accurate way, to the best of my abilities, and can be used as research material by anyone studying either time or dreams.


End file.
